News-Press Editorial

City of Falls Church voters are to be commended for delivering the right message in Tuesday's municipal election. By returning the full contingent of three Citizens for a Better City endorsed candidates back to the City Council to continue the "smart growth" economic development thrust of the last four years, citizens gave a resounding vote of confidence and thumbs up to a sustainable future.

At this critical juncture in the City's future, when it has finally drawn the attention of the regional development community and cultivated the initial stages of a "critical mass" for a renaissance of smart, mixed use redevelopment of the City's downtown, citizens here Tuesday gave a clear signal that they want their local government leaders to push on.

Although the three opponents to the CBC-backed slate insisted otherwise, this was not an election for or against the CBC "machine." It was an election for or against the current direction of the City Council. The opponents to the CBC slate all campaigned on the notion that the current Council's course has been wrong and needs to change. But by so clearly defining the options for the City's voters in this way, they actually helped to sharpen the sense of mandate for "staying the present course" embedded in Tuesday's electoral outcome.

There was a perceptible sentiment among some Falls Church citizens going into the final weeks of the campaign that splitting the electoral ticket might be a way of supporting the current course, but with the message that more attention needs to be paid in the process to retaining the atmosphere of Falls Church as it's existed for so many years.

However, it was clear to this newspaper that such a sentiment would not, in fact, produce such a desired result. Instead, a setback for the CBC candidates' course would have been just that. Losing even one seat on the Council would have been interpreted as a "vote of no confidence" for the current "smart growth" thrust, and would have sent a mixed message, at best, to developers and City leaders, alike.

Therefore, we felt it was vital, in the name of this newspaper's own years-long crusade for economic revitalization as an indispensable pre-condition for maintaining the quality of our schools, to share with our readers in this editorial space our best judgment of what electoral outcome Tuesday would produce the best future for the City.

We accepted a risk in doing this. A repudiation of our recommendations by our readers would have potentially damaged the seminal role we've strived so long to create for this paper in this community. Our decision to endorse the three candidates who ultimately won this Tuesday is, therefore, a testament to how important we felt this particular election to be for the community we serve.